Eircom in Ireland is embarking on the massed roll-out of vectoring
technology and with 150 of its fibre cabinets running vectoring already and the
expectation that this will hit 3,000 by the end of March suggests they are
happy with how G.993.5 vectoring works in the real world outside of the test
labs.

Total Telecom suggests that with 700,000 homes in the FTTC
footprint currently, that around 70% will benefit from a speed boost to offer
services in the 70 Mbps to 100 Mbps region.

Ireland has around 1.65 million private homes, so with plans to extend high
speed services to 1.4 million premises for 2016, it looks likely that a
situation not unlike the UK will arise, i.e. arguments over where the operator
has decided to deploy its services and why it is upgrading speeds for those
that already can get the faster services.

For those wanting to see what sort of difference vectoring can make, then
broadband-forum.org has a
technical paper that goes into the technical aspects, but we have extracted one
of the graphics that shows the benefits while largest for shorter lines does
significantly boost the availability of faster speeds.

Click image for larger version

The 99% WC graph represents a worst case scenario for Profile 17a VDSL2 in
terms of cross-talk, and explains why as take-up increases in areas people may
see speeds dropping away. If the real world deployments can double speeds at
900m of telephone wire from the cabinet, then while this will be complained
about as sweating the copper assets it is certainly an improvement worth
having. 50 Mbps at 900m is
significant as it means that 85% of telephones lines connected to a cabinet can
get that sort of download speed.

Openreach has been trialing vectoring but it is unclear as
to when it might launch or whether the intial trial areas have been
expanded.

Comments

Posted by
themanstan over 3 years ago
I can´t see any reason for Openreach to dither with rolling out this technology...

Posted by
TheEulerID over 3 years ago
In the context of the UK, the most obvious place to deploy this first would be on BDUK projects as it would, presumably, bring more properties within the 24mbps region using FTTC.

One thing that is unclear to me is what, if any, impact there is on modems in customer premises. Do they also need to support vectoring, and if so, do all (or the majority) in an area have to support it?

Posted by
andrew ( staff member)
over 3 years ago
Openreach specifies that modems should support vectoring, and the more that do where vectoring is enabled the better the improvements will be.

Posted by
adslmax over 3 years ago
But why in Ireland? BT are crafty indeed.

Posted by
ribble over 3 years ago
@adslmax .Eirecom has nothing to do with BT

Posted by
timmay over 3 years ago
Really we shouldn't be far of BT releasing a 160Mbps vectoring product so they can compete again with VM for headline speed.

Posted by
adslmax over 3 years ago
@ timmay - we hope so. I was hoping for FTTC vectoring with 160/40

Posted by
timmay over 3 years ago
@TheEulerID I think this won't help as much as you'd hope for rural areas. Many lines will be well over 1km. Take for example my mum's line, it's 2.6km from the cabinet but 3km from the exchange. FTTdp will be needed for better speed at her address.

Posted by
balb0wa1973 over 3 years ago
i really hope vectoring will be good for 1000m + lines

Posted by
balb0wa1973 over 3 years ago
i get 12-15mb on fttc , id be happy with 20-25 and a low ping with no interleaving.

Posted by
Spectre_01 over 3 years ago
Wonder if the Vectoring technology adds latency like interleaving does.

Posted by
Unknown101 over 3 years ago
Spectre_01 I think it improves latency and jitter as well as speed on both short and long lines (obviously better at short lines but openreach see it as an enabler and not a booster so people at the high end of their speed won't see an improvement unless openreach offer another product, maybe a 100/20 package)

Posted by
TheEulerID over 3 years ago
@timmay

I never suggested it would solve all of them. However, as you are using parental anecdotes, my parent's house is 1.1km from their cabinet, which is in phase 1 of Bucks BDUK rollout. There are several houses further away, and these will be on the margin for 24mbps (let alone 30mbps).

Posted by
4-Way over 3 years ago
Does vectoring improve the service on Aluminium lines?

Posted by
WWWombat over 3 years ago
Vectoring removes the noise caused by crosstalk, but not the noise caused by external sources, such as RFI.

FEC and interleaving will still be needed to cope with errors caused by those, so we'll still see latency issues arise. I guess they will be needed less, but still needed.

G.INP is also being trialled, which changes the way in which modems deal with errors on the line. That ought to reduce the need for interleaving (so improve latency) by adding re-transmission (so increasing jitter).

Posted by
WWWombat over 3 years ago
BT seem to have released results of phase 1 of the vectoring trials to ISPs, while also saying that they plan to do a phase 2 of the trials in the same location.

Posted by
themanstan over 3 years ago
We'll have to see how other ISPs want to play with BT and OFCOM... they can hold up vectoring by wanting to SLU, which has the potential to screw vectoring...

Posted by
arfster over 3 years ago
Wouldn't say no, given my loop length is about 50m :-) 175mbit? Tasty.

Posted by
chrysalis over 3 years ago
to me there is only 2 reasons why openreach delay vectoring, cost and regulation compliance as vectoring makes sub loop unbundling diffilcult. The tech is rollout ready for a while.

Posted by
roughbeast over 3 years ago
But of course, when BT finally get around to releasing a 160Mb product Virgin will be out there with at least 200Mb. Without replacing the copper section of their delivery system I wonder how much more BT can squeeze out with vectoring. Virgin's coaxial from the node can go 400Mb+
What is the point? I for one would be happy with no more than 200Mb, (I'm on 153Mb now.), and I would prefer VM to focus on connection symmetry so we can have higher up speeds.

Posted by
WWWombat over 3 years ago
Starting to see reports of evidence that vectoring is being turned on in Ireland.

Posted by
WWWombat over 3 years ago
@chrysalis
Isn't the reason that BT is running a phase 2 trial because they want to try Huawei's ASIC hardware instead of the original FPGA?

The use of FPGA hardware (ie re-programmable) in the trial suggests that the hardware certainly isn't field-ready yet.

And does ECI even have hardware of any sort?

Posted by
mailliw over 3 years ago
How is vectoring deployed? With additional hardware in the fibre cabinet, or software/flashing, or is it done at the exchange?

Posted by
WWWombat over 3 years ago
@mailliw
A change in the cabinets, but configured from their operations centre in Bristol, plus there is likely a change to the modems.

The cab change requires, at minimum, a change in the firmware for the linecards, to control the vectoring processing on-board. Some changes can be done by adding or changing the hardware in each cab, and it looks like the ECI cabs need a change of DSLAM.

The modem needs new firmware, which is downloaded remotely, under BT's control for modems supplied by Openreach.

Posted by
wluke over 3 years ago
Well that's encouraging then, if the majority of the heavy lifting can be done remotely. New modems...well, I think most customers would accept that. Thanks for the reply - good to know.